Senate offices evacuated after false shooter alarm

The U.S. Capitol Police, responding to an active shooter call, locked down three Senate office buildings yesterday, and evacuated one. But by early afternoon, the Capitol Police announced they had received a false alarm.

Senate buildings locked down

At 2:45 p.m. EDT yesterday (August 2), the Capitol Police reported they were “searching in and around” the Senate buildings. The Senate keeps three office buildings along Constitution Avenue, north of the Capitol and across from the Senate wing.

The Capitol Police released this thread with the latest information they had:

In that last post the Capitol Police were acknowledging they had received a false report. The post links to this detailed press release describing when the report came in (2:30 p.m.) and how they responded.

Hours later they shared these pictures from earlier active shooter training exercises:

Congress is on August recess, and only civilian staff were present.

Katie Pavlich shared this report that the active shooting threat referred to the Russell Senate Office Building. That’s the largest of the three, and the westernmost. This report indicates the Capitol Police evacuated this building and issued shelter-in-place orders for the Hart and Dirksen Buildings.

Freelance journalist Andrew Leyden had the same report.

The second link is to a site offering public logs of 911 calls. This specific page lists several calls, all giving “Fire Dispatch” as their reason.

More details of the apparent hoax

According to AP and UPI, Capitol and D. C. Metropolitan Police both concluded that they had received a “bogus call.” UPI reported the caller reported a “heavyset Hispanic male wearing body armor” inside the Hart Senate Office Building. The Hart Building is the easternmost of the three and directly adjoins the Dirksen Building. UPI later reported that the Capitol Police, with 200 officers at the scene, evacuated all three office buildings.

By 3:06 p.m. an ABC reporter had information that the DCMPD knew the report was false.

Late last night, several X users were speculating that the Capitol and/or Metro Police staged the event to distract from the Devon Archer revelations about Hunter Biden.

At last report neither police agency had any clue to identify the perpetrator of the hoax.